So, you may be thinking to yourself "Gee, I sure do like Morophon, but what tribe do I build for him?". Buddy I have the answer for you. Avatar! Not only was it a James Cameron movie, and an animated series on Nickelodeon. The time is now for it to be a tribal deck as well.
Avatars are generally pretty sweet creatures, especially the cycles from Shadowmoor and Eventide. I've always loved these cards, the creatures and the auras that go along with them. Since I first found out that they were a cycle, I wanted to build around them. Thanks to Morophon, the Boundless I can! Now, before we get too into this, we should address the elephant in the room. Our commander is the reason Fist of Suns jumped $13, since Fist of Suns sets an alternate casting cost, our commander discounts that cost and makes our Avatars free to cast. This is pretty powerful, allowing us to get cards like Progenitus out stupid early in the game, and usually not just one avatar, but multiples. This cute little two card combo is one of the more powerful things the deck can do, but certainly not the only one. Let's take a look at the themes of the deck and go from there.
Ramp City
So, you wanna build a deck with an average CMC of 4.5 huh? Your commander is a 7 drop huh? Well friend, seems like you're in the market for some ramp. It's very necessary for this deck to ramp if it wants to live up to its namesake, and honestly I might even add more in here depending on how it plays when I'm goldfishing it. Getting our commander out early is great, and if we're able to also have Jodah, Archmage Eternal or Fist of Suns when that happens, then all the better. We want our deck to live up to its namesake after all. We'll start out with a couple creatures Birds of Paradise is a cutie everyone recognizes, also Kiora's Follower isn't strictly ramp, but it can untap a land or artifact, which is as good as ramp in my opinion. Farseek lets us grab a shock land, which is good for color fixing. A lot of our avatars are pretty color intensive, so the more reliable our access to colors is the better. Guided Passage I'm going to count as ramp because it nets us a land, also who knows maybe we strike a deal and opponent gives us a Sol Ring. Kodama's Reach and Skyshroud Claim are obvious includes, Skyshroud can also grab us shock lands, very important. Urban Evolution is a pretty cute card I think, draw three for 5 mana. Not a terrible rate, but it gives us an extra land drop too, not too shabby. Growth Spiral is Urban Evolution's cute younger sister. Plasm Capture seems on paper to just be a more mana intensive Mana Drain however, it gives us colored mana. That alone justifies it for me, also it's an adorable card that hardly ever sees play, so let's do it. This deck isn't a CEDH deck, we're playing avatar tribal. We're allowed to be a little sub-optimal I think. Next up is the suite of artifact based ramp, which is the vast majority of our artifacts. Chromatic Lantern is SO important because of how specific our colors need to be to cast stuff. Cloud Key and Urza's Incubator will make all our Avatars cheaper. Fellwar Stone, Sol Ring and Thran Dynamo finish out our artifacts. We also have two enchantments Mirari's Wake really helps even out our colors as well as providing an addition anthem to our team, which our commander does as well. Smothering Tithe is a workhorse that needs to be answered immediately otherwise it gives us a ton of colored mana, which is what we want.
Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater
What's better than ramping into our stuff? Cheating it's cost. We have a couple things in here for it, certainly focused more on ramp because it's a bit more reliable, but I'd be remiss to not include some ways to cheat costs. The Ur-Dragon is one of the spicier cards in here, it allows us to draw cards and cheat stuff out for free. What's really neat though is it's a 5 color avatar, which means with our commander out he's a 4 CMC huge dragon that does all the things, love it. Descendants' Path is a cute little card that lets you passively get value at your upkeep (sometimes). It can also ruin our top deck by getting rid of anything that isn't an avatar, so play at your own risk. Finally, Belbe's Portal and Quicksilver Amulet are our two artifacts that let us throw out big baddies.
Avatars
Speaking of big baddies, let's go into some of my favorite avatars we have in here. Let's start out with two avatars that have built-in discounts in their text boxes, Avatar of Might and Avatar of Woe both can discount themselves by 6, depending on what the game's been like. These are pretty powerful cards in a vacuum, and they're exactly what this deck wants to do. Child of Alara is one of my favorite commanders. I run it at the helm of my superfriends deck, and I love it. That being said, it is an avatar that we can cast for free with our commander out, kinda cool. The obvious thing to address though is that it's a double edged sword that might cut us worse than our opponents. We're running a bit or artifact based ramp as well as a bunch of powerful cards, chances are that if the Child dies we lose some good stuff, also it's not our commander so we don't have an option of whether it dies or not, could come back to bite us. Just something to consider, that being said I do think it's a very powerful effect that sometimes won't hurt us at all. Deity of Scars is a 7/7 trample (although he starts out as a 5/5), whether has has his counters on him or not is fine because we'll likely be spending 3 mana on him. Deus of Calamity is a pet card of mine, first one of the avatars from this cycle I ever saw. Ran him in my Gruul Xenagos deck back in the days of Theros, love him. Divinity of Pride is a great card in Commander since he'll almost always have his ability turned on. Dominus of Fealty lets us take something for free every turn, killer. I love effects like that that scale with the table. Karona, False God is cute when we're playing 5 color tribal, and also she's been errata'd to be an Avatar herself! Luminate Primordial is a big body that also lets us Swords to Plowshares for every opponent. Muldrotha, the Gravetide is a good way to recur our avatars, as well as any enchantments or artifacts that get destroyed, as they should. Niv-Mizzet Reborn is so killer in this deck, never would have guessed he's be a useful card in the 99, but he's great. Since our Shadowmoor and Eventide avatars are two colors, he can grab them. Same with our auras and some other cards here and there. Gives us great card selection. Overbeing of Myth maybe isn't the most powerful Avatar in here, and likely won't have too much power and toughness most of the time. However, it draws us cards. That warrants the include, and the sweet promo art. Oversoul of Dusk is either a useful attacker, or a great blocker. Phage the Untouchable is too cute to not include. Her mana cost can be pretty prohibitive, and she's only one color so our commander doesn't discount her too much. However we have ways to cut down on her generic mana and fix colors. Who knows, could be cute potentially. This deck is a little silly so I'm def including her. Soul of Theros is the only one of the planar avatars to make the cut. The others were some of my notable excludes from this tech. I really like Soul of Innistrad for the recursion, Soul of New Phyrexia for the protection, and Soul of Ravnica for the card draw, however their activated abilities are expensive and not discounted by anything in the deck. They're both cards that could be run in here, but I just felt like I didn't have the base to take full advantage of them. That being said, I did include Soul of Theros and that's just because the combination of First Strike and Lifelink seems very powerful with all our big baddies. Finally, the aforementioned The Ur-Dragon is a huge workhorse.
Quickdraw
Oh the cards you'll draw. With the amount of ramp we have in here, we wanna make sure we have the stuff to ramp into, not just the resources. I didn't include a crazy amount of card draw in here because the bigger emphasis was to make sure our mana base was where it should be and making sure we'd reliably be able to cast what's in our hand. That being said: The aforementioned Niv-Mizzet Reborn and Overbeing of Myth are two cretaures that either draw us cards, or put cards into our hand. Also Trophy Mage will snag us whatever cute little artifact we might need. There are some decent options. Urban Evolution and Growth Spiral were spoken of earlier, they're still cute. Conflux and Guided Passage get us cards in hand, so not draw but card advantage. Good enough. Sensei's Divining Top is great not only for manipulating our top deck, but also for drawing us cards when we really need it. Such a powerful card, play with it. Finally rounding things out are the enchantments: Descendants' Path is card advantage (if it works). Rhystic Study is such a HOUSE in a multiplayer game, such cards so many draw. Temur Ascendancy is hella cool because it's basically Fires of Yavimaya that nets us a card whenever a creature with power 4 or greater enters our battlefield (it's like all our creatures). With Temur Ascendancy, Morophon, the Boundless, and either Jodah, Archmage Eternal or Fist of Suns we can do some really silly things.
